I've been working so much on projects, that I regret I've neglected my writing again. For the holidays, I worked on a variety of hats, from simple to elaborate. All of these were crocheted from the top down.

The first is a very simple infant hat with a standard poof. It was a quick project with a tough yarn to work with.

The second is one I'm proud of, although I can think of a few slight changes already. It's made to look like the TARDIS, and I really enjoyed the changes in panels to make the different sections. I added one of my mom's style of indestructible poofs to give it some flavor.

The last was another fast project that gave me the chance to do some more experimenting with a Captian America theme.

This blanket was actually commissioned by a young student for her mother as a Christmas gift. I loved being able to work on something for someone so young, and I'm extremely grateful that she wanted to have something created instead of mass-produced.

With the sentimentality I felt in creating this, I used one of patterns my mom chose for my sons' baby blankets and slightly modified it for an adult. I added the scalloped edge and some final details to really keep it together.

This little elephant was another fun venture for me to make something on land. I've been doing more terrestrial animals, and I'm beginning to refine my style with these. This one worked well into that style with my nose to tail focus. The biggest change I made was crocheting in a spiral instead of working in rows. This gave it a very smooth transition across the whole body, but it also eliminated the midline that I use to line up limbs. That just goes to show that every project works up a little differently.

I've been sitting on this project for a little while, and finally am writing about the Halloween hats I made for the boys. These were a quick, last minute project since they aren't quite old enough to "get" the holiday yet. Living in Minnesota, they do need to get used to wearing some warm hats.

These are based on Mike and Sully from Monster's Inc. I love this movie! But it's hard to go wrong with Billy Crystal and John Goodman. In both hats I chose a single feature to focus on in the design. For Mike Wisowski, I added the big eye. For Sully, I added the little horns. I used the feature color to make braided ties on the bottom of the ear flaps.

This pair of mittens was made as another charity auction piece. These worked up really quickly, and were easy to integrate the stripe through the middle. The striping worked integrated the colors of the Wild hockey team.

The biggest change with these is the use of crochet instead of knit (I'm on a bit of a crochet kick lately). The big change this caused is how its made: Crochet starts at the top and works toward the wrist, whereas when I knit a pattern, I start at the base for maximum stitch stretch. Since crochet has a fairly uniform stretch - less than knit - I was able to to reverse the direction.